Cauterize
by fiendies
Summary: At Bonnie's Academy for the Troubled, we'll turn your child into an admirable young adult, all the while teaching them the necessary skills to summon demons! Note: Bonnie's is not responsible for any murder, mutilation or maiming.
1. The Pinch

**Cauterize**

1. The Pinch

It starts like this: three days left of summer vacation, a bone and a book. The bone is mine, an extra rib I had removed as a child; the book, though, is a Grim. It's my gram's, every page filled in with her magic and her words and her perfect summoning diagrams. Each one is dated, labeled with the same fearful precision that embodies everything about my grandma.

I splay my fingers across pages seventy-seven and seventy-eight: a basic summoning for the demon _vaporeon_. It's a homemade one, nothing less than pure genius, as all of my gram's personal, hand-drawn diagrams are; my Grim is nothing but textbook circles, traced with protractors and compasses. I adjust the bone and mutter the words. My gram can do it without saying a thing, but she's what you might call a prodigy (it says so on at least three of the seven framed certificates on the wall).

The salty scent of the ocean fills my gram's sitting room and the temperature drops to near freezing. Clear, icy water spills from the book and onto the blonde hardwood floors, pooling around my bare feet. It's so cold it hurts.

"Shit!" I hiss, shoving the Grim away from me.

The flow stops abruptly and the book skitters through the puddle. Even though the pages stay dry and the ink doesn't run, my gram still crosses the room with long strides and smacks me upside the head. Grendel, a _honchkrow_ and one of my gram's many contracted beasties, makes a smug noise like: _I told you she couldn't do it_.

"Idiot," snaps my gram, whacking me again for good measure, harder this time. "You were doing _well_."

"It caught me off guard," I say defensively. "I wasn't expecting it."

"Expect _everything_!" spits Gram. "Demons aren't going to coddle you – in fact, they expect you to take care of _them_." Every line of her body is relaxed, but her words are cutting and her eyes are like steel. I shrink away from her rage; I can't help it. I keep my eyes trained on her Chanel pumps and blink back tears (of embarrassment or pain or frustration, I don't know). She's quiet for a minute, looking down on me as Grendel flutters to her shoulder. Then she waves her hand and grunts, "Clean this up, before the salt ruins my floor."

I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes, so hard I see stars. "Yes. Sorry."

I listen to her leave. I clean and clean, until the joints in my fingers ache. I don't cry.

xxx

Mornings are an isolated hell. It is the time when my gram and I sit across from each other at the kitchen table and eat identical breakfasts of porridge with apple slices and brown sugar. Gram watches me over her morning cocoa without blinking, made triply intimidating with Grendel looming over her, and I try not to look her in the eye. There has never been a breakfast where we have had a proper conversation.

Today, Gram's already dressed (Burberry, Valentino shoes), legs crossed at the ankle. She hasn't got Grendel with her and that worries me. There's a mountain of whipped cream on her hot chocolate, but it hasn't been touched.

"Augustine," she says crisply, "sit down."

Oh, there, she's done it: she's used the forbidden full first name. Oh, my death nears. This is how doctors tell the relatives that their family member just _didn't make it_, and my _condolences_. I slump into the seat opposite her, dreading. Maybe she'll comment on yesterday's failure, and burn my Grim, the whole thing, to ash. She'd do it, too, without a second thought, and then have me make a new one, with new diagrams, until everything was perfect.

Instead, she passes me a pamphlet from her handbag. It's glossy and professional, with _Bonnie's Academy for the Troubled_ emblazoned on the front. I blank for a second, just one second, because there isn't a single person who doesn't know about Bonnie's – it's _the_ school for, as advertised, the _troubled_. The students range from sickeningly good to disastrously terrible in terms of summoning, but every single one of them is a complete psycho.

"I'm not troubled," I say immediately. Defend, says my brain, says my gut. Defend against this injustice, this wrong against you.

"And yet," replies Gram coolly, "here you are: the worst summoner this family has seen in four decades."

She's so impartial, so unaffected by me, and while part of me thinks that this should make me angry, it really does nothing but drain me. My head feels heavy, my neck weak. I want to look her right in the face and challenge her, challenge the decision that's already been made, but I can't muster up the courage.

Pathetically, I flip open the pamphlet: a pair of boys with straight white teeth and uniforms with the creases ironed into razor edges. The text praises Bonnie's, how it whips young men and women into shape, changes them for the absolute better and turns them into fine, functioning members of society.

"Sending me to a fancy school won't make me a better summoner. Maybe I'm a black sheep," I try.

Defend, defend.

My gram smiles thinly, without humor. "Your parents were ideal summoners. Your grandfather developed the Seventeen-point Star theory. I am _beyond_ ideal." She leans forward, almost sneering now. "It is genetically impossible for you to be a _black sheep_."

The horrible thing about my gram is that she does not lie. She hurts and hits and dresses in designer clothing, but she does not lie.

The horrible thing about me is that I don't lie, either, but my honesty is of the weakest sort. It's the sort of truthfulness that is born of an inability to fib; everything about me pales in comparison to my gram, from our truths to our crocodile tears to the way we wear our Westwood.

For this reason, I accept the inevitably of my situation and bend, as always, under Gram's will. I bow my head and she nods in approval of my placidity.

"Get dressed, then," says Gram, standing. "We shall set off immediately."

"You've enrolled me already." Not even a question. I doubt that there is a person in the world whom my gram does not know. She could probably get me in to any school, any where in less than three phone calls.

"Certainly," she says primly.

"What should I wear?" One might think that at my age I could dress myself, but whatever I choose on my own will be critiqued into oblivion; may as well get Gram's opinion now.

For the first time in a long while, Gram looks at me with something akin to affection, an emotion she has had trouble expressing since Grampy died. She glances from my face, takes in the line of my shoulders, the angle of my fringe. "McQueen," she decides. "And be quick about it. We're on a tight schedule. I have a hair appointment at four."

And for some reason that makes me laugh, even though I feel sick to my stomach.

xxx

When I was small, I used to sit on my grandpa's lap while he described his theories to me. He came up with a lot of them (which can be found on page 227-256 in _Summoning Level 2_, and _The Theoretical Summoner_ pages 302-319), but the most famous one he ever devised was the Seventeen-point Star. It categorized recorded demons into seventeen types, and it was later expanded to include dual-type demons. It revolutionized how demons were viewed and inspired Romulus Luther's law of battle (Luther's Law, page 44-45, _The Complete Demonic Battle System_).

I read over Grampy's notes in the car. Bonnie's is two hours out of the city, in farm country where land is cheap and the administrators have a legitimate reason to turn Bonnie's into a boarding school. My bags are packed hastily with everything that would fit, but I keep my grampy's things and my Grim close.

Gram is sitting next to me, occasionally barking orders at the cabbie, who can't seem to decide whether he wants to be dismayed by my gram's brutality, or pleased that he's going to up nearly four-hundred quid after this trip.

I get lost in my grampy's neat, spidery print until my gram pinches my arm. I jerk away from her. She doesn't say anything, just points out the window, where the roof of the school is visible past the fields of corn and still fruitless apple orchards. Far past the school, a little town sits on the crest of a hill.

"I won't be going in with you," says Gram.

"I know. You'll be late for your hair appointment."

Gram snorts and snatches my Grim; my whole body tenses. She flips through the first dozen pages, the ones with my textbook diagrams, and tears them all out. She rolls down the window and lets the pages loose. I nearly punch her right then, because those stupid, useless circles are my best effort and damn, damn, damn. I bite my tongue to hold back my curses.

"Forget the texts," says Gram haughtily. "Make up your own." She snaps my Grim closed and hands it back. I cradle it to my chest like a wounded kitten. She pauses, and, blasé: "You can come home for winter break, if you're not failing."

We pull up, and Gram looks like she might pat my hand or wish me good luck or something, but she doesn't. She just shoos me out of the car and instructs me to not fuck up. I try to tell her I won't, but the words get stuck by my teeth. I watch the car leave and, predictably, Gram does not spare me a backwards glance.

The gates: tall, painted white, rusting at the hinges but sturdy. A brick wall surrounds the property, overrun by creeping green vines and lined with shrubbery. The school itself is a jarring mix of buildings both new in old, glass in some places and wraparound porches in others. I hate it already.

My stomach hurts like hell.

And so, with as much composure as I can muster, I set my bags down and vomit into a bush, my heart pounding in my chest like a lion beating its head against the bars of a cage.

* * *

><p><strong>1. Cheerio<strong>, all; most sincere apologies for dropping off the face of the earth. I do hope you enjoyed Ch.1 of _Cauterize_, which I swear upon my soul will be finished. An academy fic it is, though you've never seen one quite like this (and if you have, I will happily commit seppuku). Below you may find an Original Character form, which _must_ to the power of a billion be sent to me _by PM_, filled out to the best of your ability.

**Name:  
>Age:<strong> 15-ish+ (high school age)  
><strong>Appearance:<strong>

**Personality:** Be detailed; cram as much as you can in here.**  
>Talents:<br>Sucks** **at:**

**Summoning Ability:** 1=shitty (min), 5=BAMF (max)  
><strong>Top 3 Favorite Beasties:<strong> For reference.

**History:** You may keep it brief; include, at least, why they were sent to Bonnie's. I don't give a fig where they're from, but include whatever you perceive as pertinent.

**+Note, children, that by sending me thine character, you are granting me permission to make any adjustments I see fit and to do as I please with them.**


	2. Bone Deep

**Cauterize**

2. Bone Deep

Every one in one-thousand kids is born a summoner, and of that amount, only forty-percent of them are going to keep the ability through pubescence and into adulthood. My Gram told me once that we're a dying breed, so I'm not hugely surprised to find that Bonnie's has only about two-hundred kids. Seventy-eight girls to one-hundred-twenty-two boys. I don't know if that means that boys are more criminally inclined, or if girls are just better at hiding it.

It's probably better that way in any case; the grounds are big, but not big enough to accommodate any more students than there already are, and the school seems self-sufficient enough to make me uncomfortable – no one ever really has to leave. I can feel the wards, too, crackling with demonic energy. They make the air taste sour, like lightning and dark magic. I can hardly summon a house fly, but I've always had particular trouble with dark demons (Gram, on the other hand, has an affinity for them); they make me queasy.

That is, it's not uncommon for schools to put up wards, just in case something goes wrong – a few kids and a few teachers are dispensable, and monsters without masters are nothing short of cataclysmic. These wards though, they feel nasty, and I get the distinct feeling that they're in place to keep _us_ in. Not demons, us.

I pause on the path that leads to the dorms at the back of the property and bend to pick up a pebble, smooth and grey. My grampy taught me this: a sure-fire way to test out a ward. I weigh the pebble in my hand for a second, and then throw it over the wall as hard as I can.

Only it doesn't go over. It explodes in midair with a sound like a gunshot.

"Yikes," I whisper, and scuttle away before I'm seen.

Dark demons, then, or maybe psychic ones. Way back when, during the time when people still believed that the only way to get anything done was to make sacrifices to God, demons were slaughtered in this world and their bodies were buried at the four cardinal points of an area. The magic seeped from their corpses into the earth and created wards. Even then, before the Seventeen-point Star theory, people recognized that certain demons made better wards than others.

There are more efficient ways now (demons are hard to kill), but no modern ward is ever going to be as strong as the ones around the old castles and churches, the countryside towns with their outdated superstitions and prejudiced fear of outsiders.

I pick up another pebble and toss it into a cluster of sparrows. They scatter, but don't fly away, which makes me even more nervous; animals are generally much smarter than humans give them credit for. I don't know anything substantial about wards, other than that they're usually easy to get through going in and infinitely more difficult to get through going out, so I snatch a third pebble from the ground. Just a test, I tell myself, so I know what I'm getting myself into. It's a logical thing to do. I'm proving a theory.

There's a crow perched on a little wooden sign that reads 'Pumpkin Patch' in faded green paint. If I'd been born into a family of baseball players instead of summoners, I'd be a prodigy. The stone whizzes past the crow's head, narrowly missing its beady black eye, and it flaps away with a grating caw. The second its foot touches the wall, it explodes in a splatter of guts and feathers. I wipe a bit of brain off my chin, feeling sick again.

"Hey! What are you _doing_?"

Yikes, yikes. I don't even look back. I grab my luggage and make a break for it.

xxx

The dorm houses are very Swiss chalet, with big windows and balconies, exposed eaves and peeling white paint. There's a big porch out front and the houses are enclosed in a copse of enormous willow trees. There are picnic tables and tire swings. It's so quaint that it makes me uneasy.

I step inside the foyer, wanting nothing more than to unpack and take a nap. My trick with the crow unsettled me, though I can't say I'm guilty over it. What's one blackbird in the name of scientific advancement?

To my left there's a sitting area, to my right a kitchen, and a narrow staircase separating them. There's a piece of laminated paper stuck to the wall with numerous staples that says: _Rooming arrangements posted on each floor at top of stairs; four girls to a room; if you can read you can find your spot – Love, Lauren, your most humble dorm head_.

It's kind of snarky and I don't like it; a prejudice I picked up from Gram – she hated any sass from me, so I just stopped sassing her. Grampy used to think my sarcasm was funny, but he's dead and Gram cares so little about what her living relations think, that dead relations are probably somewhere near banana slugs on her List of Prioritized Thinking. I wish I was more like my Gram. I hate thinking about dead people.

As promised by Humble Dorm Head Lauren, there's a list of names and room numbers at the top of the stairs, but none of the names are mine. I count seven doors, but I think one's a bathroom and I keep climbing. Third and fourth floors yield the same results, which puts me undoubtedly on the fifth floor. That makes me nervous, too, having only five other girls on my floor. I'm certain Gram has something to do with this.

The fifth floor has the same layout as its predecessors. I check the sheet on the wall. And there I am: _Lamb, Augustine_, like a beacon shining in the night, letting everyone know that I'm a Lamb. I'm like the Harry Potter of Bonnie's, except Harry Potter was a hero and the Lambs are more like executioners but I really don't like to think about _that_. I tell myself that there are many Lamb families in the world.

I'm in room three, between _Fields, Rebecca_ and _Whiteraven, Athena_ which is just the most pretentious name I have ever heard. I met the Whiteravens once, at one of my Gram's many dinner parties. They were a lovely looking couple until they opened their mouths. Gram suffered through their anecdotes with her usual frigid politeness and has since refrained from inviting them back. I'm sure she only had them over in the first place because they're a somewhat prestigious family.

Rebecca Fields, on the other hand, rings no bells. I know at least one person from every prominent family in the Western hemisphere and the Fields aren't one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if this Rebecca girl turns out to be a fluke – a summoner born into a normal family and sent to Bonnie's for her ability. It happens often enough.

The room is predictably bare. There's a window, a bunk-bed and a desk against the opposite wall. The floors are in surprisingly good shape – far from my grandmother's immaculate blonde hardwood, of course, but not bad. There's a wardrobe in the far corner and I immediately begin to unpack. I line up my shoes (Chanel and Louboutin and Valentino) at the bottom and then set about organizing in alphabetical order by brand name.

I'm usually not a very tidy person, but I like my closet neat. If there's one thing that I was able to take away from Gram, it's the importance of looking good: presentable and simultaneously unapproachable. I don't feel as though anyone here will care too much for designer labels, but hopefully if I look rich enough, snobbish enough and bitchy enough, no one will be able to come up with a reason to talk to me.

The school counsellor at St. Celeste's – an all girls' institution I attended up until now – once told me that the way I arranged my clothes was a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that had manifested from a need to control something, since my Gram controls almost everything else about my life. I felt I could agree with that until she started up on other things about my Gram, and then I got a bit angry.

I don't know.

Maybe I've been trained and brainwashed to stand up for Gram whenever someone tries to talk smack about her, but she's all I got left. I'd rather drink one of Gram's health smoothies than let some stodgy old bat call her "abusive and senile."

But just thinking about that makes me very, very tired. The nap I was wanting earlier is seeming like a good idea.

Everything about this place is draining, from its wards to its trapped little birds to its okay-but-not-great floors. I feel like I need to vomit and I crawl over to the bed, picking up the trash bin by the door as I go. The sheets are scratchy but clean and the quilted blanket is ugly but warm. I sigh against the pillows and miss my Gram terribly.

xxx

Here there is a very specific proceeding of events: when I wake, I understand that it is dinnertime; I follow the trailing parade of girls to what I assume is the mess hall and there are long polished wood tables and high ceilings and flickering fluorescent lights; everyone's lining up with a tray, so I do that too.

This is when I meet _Fields, Rebecca_.

She's emaciated and terrifying, a shock of red hair, a nasty grin. I take two steps back and she shoves the boy in front of me out of line. I hope he doesn't shove her back, because she looks as though a feather landing on her would snap every bone in her body. But he cowers as I am cowering, and mutters a hurried, "Sorry, Crash," before stumbling to the back of the line.

She doesn't seem to notice me, though, and I watch as she bypasses everyone and goes straight to the dessert counter, helping herself to a cookie and a water bottle. I document everything about her and make a note to send a letter to Gram asking about the Fields family.

It mostly goes spiralling down from there.

I notice that no one really seems to sit or talk with anyone else, except for a girl dressed like it's Halloween, who chats with the people next to her until one of them throws a punch. I slouch in my seat while she cackles, her nose gushing blood, and I wonder why no one tries to step in.

"You wanna go, Ray-Ray?" she gurgles. "Or you just angry cause your mama doesn't want her _freak son_ around?"

"I think," he says, scarily calm, "that you're a bit confused as to who the 'freak' is around here."

I find that strangely funny because as far as I'm concerned, they're all _freaks_. Every single one of them is a time bomb waiting to go off, and once one does, they all will. I wonder if I can escape without being noticed. I wonder if this sort of thing happens all the time.

"It does," whispers a voice to my left. I jump. "Sorry," says the girl, "I didn't mean to frighten you. But those two are always at it. That's Raven Castiel and Fiddle." My brow jumps up at the names. "And I'm Nat. Fletcher."

I vaguely recall her name from the list of people on my floor. "August," I reply.

Fletcher smiles and shifts a little closer, touching my wrist gently. "Raven's really short-tempered and Fiddle's really annoying – they don't get along well." She pauses. "Not many people get along well around here – oh, look, the teachers will step in now."

I can see why. The Castiel boy has pulled out a Grim, bound indiscreetly in black leather. He spits onto the page – an effective mortal medium I've never considered, though the demon can't be strong if saliva can hold it here – but before he can say the incantation (if he even needs one), an extremely fat lady wrenches the book from his hands. I'm surprised because I didn't see her come in and she's roughly the size of a hippopotamus. Castiel, too, looks slightly taken aback.

"Headmistress Mackenzie Evelyn," says Fletcher cheerfully, but she quiets down when Evelyn clears her throat.

"Welcome back, everyone," she says acidly, giving Castiel a sidelong glare. He doesn't seem to notice. Evelyn has the voice of a smoker, low and rough. Gram abhors smoking, and so do I. I've never met this lady, but I already dislike her. "I'm so very glad you all arrived safely, and I _do_ hope you've been enjoying your meal."

Some nervous laughter and uncertain nodding.

"Now, though, seems like a good time to remind you all the use of Grims is not permitted unless otherwise stated and, Mr. Castiel, it is _explicitly forbidden_ to summon demons for use against your fellow students. Punishment for such a thing is two hours in the Quiet Room." Headmistress Evelyn smiles kindly. "Have a good evening, everyone, and enjoy your last day off. Classes start Monday morning at precisely 8:45!"

And she whirls away just like that, dragging Castiel along behind her. I decide to add her to the list of people I'd like Gram to investigate. She's strangely nimble for her size and if Gram could see her nasty velvet dress, she just might have a fit. Or go blind. Or both.

"A bit intimidating, isn't she? I wouldn't be surprised if she puts Raven in the Quiet Room just to make an example of him," says Fletcher.

"And the Quiet Room is…" I prompt.

"It's a room," she tells me, "in the basement of the main building. It's been soundproofed so that it's completely silent inside. They say that before Evelyn became headmistress, they used to lock the really bad kids in there for full days – so long that they went crazy." She smiles. "Crazier. I've never been inside, of course. I like to keep my nose clean."

"Ah," I say, because I'm out of words.

xxx

I don't notice until much later that the bracelet I was wearing before is gone.

xxx

When I finally meet Humble Dorm Head Lauren, the first thing she does is try to stab me in the neck with a pencil. She squints at me through the three-in-the-morning gloom, her mechanical murder weapon pressed to the spot where my neck becomes my jaw. She's pretty enough that I wouldn't mind stabbing her back.

"'Morning," I sneer.

"Good morning. What, may I ask, are you doing?"

"Getting a drink." Not a lie. I'm a bad liar. I hold up the glass I pulled from the cupboard.

She squints at me even harder and I am suddenly and very acutely aware of the fact that I'm half-naked in only underwear and an oversized button-down shirt. Which is to say: she's in an equal state of dishevelled just-out-of-bed-ness, but she either doesn't notice or doesn't care. I try to give her one of Gram's patent laser-beam glares.

"Are you quite alright?" she asks, like she hasn't just tried to stick a pencil through my trachea. "You look like you're in pain."

I stop trying to give one of Gram's patent laser-beam glares, and settle instead on one of the most deeply unfriendly looks I can muster. Humble Dorm Head Lauren looks completely unperturbed, though she does remove her pencil from its precarious position.

"Listen," I say after a moment of silence, "it's really fucking early so can I help you with something or…?"

She tilts her head and regards me with a quiet curiosity. "You should go back to bed," she says decidedly. "It's still dark. Bad things happen in the dark."

Something about her voice reminds me of Gram, cold and knowledgeable and leaving no room for argument. I do what I'm told.

She _is_ right, after all. Bad things do happen in the dark.

* * *

><p><strong>2. <strong>A personal theory says that ninety-percent of police officers dislike domestic abuse cases (for obvious reasons, and) simply for the fact that victims, particularly women, are apt to blaming themselves. In any case, _Jackinafrickinbox _left a very perceptive review about abusive aspect of Gram and August's relationship.

On a different note, I can't say I'm entirely pleased with this chapter, though there are parts that I like. It doesn't flow as well as I wanted it to, jarring ending. If any of you have any suggestions for improvement, I'd love to hear them!

And lastly: to those of you who have intrusted me with your beloved characters, could I trouble you to inform me of their sexuality (if they have one)? By review is fine (and for anyone planning on submitting a character, as I'm still accepting them, just include it in your application).

Kiss, kiss, love you all! Thanks for reading!


	3. The Chicken Coop

**Cauterize**

3. The Chicken Coop

Gram said often that summoners make up the bones and guts and brains of humanity, the important bits. Normal people are the extras. They're the fat, the armpit hair, the impacted wisdom teeth – the bits that need trimming and removing. I still haven't formed my own opinion of the matter, but even Grampy, who was very tolerant of the average, said that normal people were always trying to dilute summoner genes with their grossness. The inferior always feel a need to wipe out the superior (page 449, _A Modern History of Summoning: The Great Taint_).

I suppose that it was for this reason that the International Summoning Confederation went all out of its way to start recording marriages between summoner families and the subsequent children born of these marriages. Not that it's very hard – everyone is everyone's cousin six or seven times removed nowadays, and marriages are almost always arranged. My fiancé is called Étienne. He's been mine since I was seven, and he's three years my senior, started studying literature at La Sorbonne this year. I only like him as a friend, though I'm sure I'll love him eventually, as he's very kind and patient with me. He's handsome and dresses well, too. I like his smile. I've heard love grows from silly things like that.

In any case, like all summoner girls, I'll grow up and have his children, probably more than one. I'm an only child; Gram always said it would've been better if I had lots of brothers and sisters, seeing as she was the youngest (and most talented) of fourteen, and my Grampy one of seven. Summoners are a bit behind the times in that regard, I think, though most families certainly have enough money to support numbers like that. We all come from old money (Gram holds within her heart a special hatred for the nouveau riche), and lots of it. I've never met a proper summoner – one who wasn't born by accident into a regular family – who hasn't known luxury.

In fact, there was once a time when you could start off in Swansea and get all the way to Grimsby without ever leaving Lamb property. Almost all of it was sold, of course, but we still own an estate in Sussex, flats in London and Leeds, and several plots of land in Italy, France and Belgium. The family on Gram's side owns half the state of Louisiana. The city of New Orleans practically pays us rent.

And of course there are those who dip into the underbelly of society and leech luxury from the dollars of the corrupt, the working class, from everyone, but the Lambs don't associate with them.

Not publicly, anyways.

xxx

I stay in bed and don't eat anything all of Sunday, and when Monday comes 'round, I consider suicide – I'll make a rope of designer scarves and hang myself. I have never enjoyed school. Gram wouldn't have been pleased if I got perfect marks in all my classes, so my 'above average' marks translate into near failures. Gram never went to school – she never had to, she was so good. When she was only ten years old the ISC scholars were studying her diagrams.

I'll never be like that, of course, but I do sometimes wish that I'll suddenly develop astounding ability.

Ha-ha.

They say natural ability is something you're born with, something that no amount of practice or training can change. It means you can only extend so far, that you'll only be so good. It means that even if someone like me studies every day for the rest of their life, they'll never match someone like Gram who was born and already _knew_, could already feel the seam where the two worlds met and understood instinctively how to reach into that second world and pull out what she needed.

Even monsters respect that.

Downstairs, Humble Dorm Head Lauren is passing out schedules. She doesn't acknowledge me, gives no indication that she recalls nearly skewering me through the neck when I give her my name and she passes me a laminated card, six by four inches. It has my name on the back and my timetable printed in miniscule letters. Monday, it says, after breakfast: group discussion.

Nat Fletcher materializes at my shoulder. "I tried," she says apologetically in way of greeting, "I tried to bring you food yesterday, but you wouldn't answer the door or anything. We had cake 'cause it was the headmistress's birthday. And you missed chapel."

I want to tell her it's not her fault, like, jeez, but I can't. Her freckles map out constellations across the bridge of her nose, distracting me. I shrug.

"You 'n' I have group discussion together this morning," she continues, glancing over my card. I didn't even realize she'd taken it. "It's kind of like group therapy, but less actively looking for problems in each other. It's like…convalescence. You kind of open up gradually as you get to know the people around you. They make us do it because we're all sociopaths with serious issues."

She lifts her eyebrows and smiles. She thinks she's made a joke, but I know it's true.

I don't want to get to know the people around me, is what I want to say, though I don't of course. Right now, I am treating Natalie Fletcher like lighthouse, while I am the captain of a ship, and Bonnie's is the sea and the fog and all the things that might lead me astray. I imagine she'll serve me well, but really, no one needs a lighthouse once they're on land.

Nat announces that she has to use the bathroom and leaves me. I don't mind. I people watch while I wait. Everyone still seems sleepy, lethargic from summer break, sluggish. Gram does not allow me the luxury of sleeping in, so I feel like the only one who is properly awake. That's fine. People mutter to themselves and mutter to each other about their schedules, I pick out the people who are in 'group discussion' with me. Athena Whiteraven looks like her mother, like a princess in the slums, lovely and trying to hide it. I hate her instantly. Helena Goldstein is with her bastard half-sister in the far corner, communicating in the way that siblings can, without words. I don't like the Goldsteins, and neither does Gram. They're power hungry, a newer family, with a father trying to muscle his way onto the ISC council. The one from the other night, Fiddle, is talking to herself, eyes rolling around in her head so I can see the whites, all lined with thin pink capillaries.

When Humble Dorm Head Lauren ushers us outside and to the mess hall, I try not to touch anyone. It's occurred to me, in watching them, that we are barely the same species. There's me, and there's them. I wonder, for the briefest of moments, if Gram really understood what she was throwing me into. It's a mosh pit of crazies, people so completely mad that they don't seem to register that they've been locked in a prettied up asylum.

But then I remember that it's Gram and Gram doesn't make mistakes.

Breakfast is blurry. I eat some porridge, but it makes me ill, so I run to the loo and throw it up. I end up drinking just a little hot chocolate, which isn't so bad when I mix it with some of the coffee that Nat snuck from the professors' table. I meet a boy called Milgram March, who is my age and seems quite normal, which makes me nervous in a roundabout sort of way. Why would a normal person be here unless they were secretly a freak just pretending to be normal? But Milgram tells me that he likes how my hair is symmetrical and I figure he's probably alright.

And then it is group discussion, which takes place outside on a big picnic blanket when the weather is nice, like today. I don't like sitting on the ground, so I do a bit of a crouch instead. Nat flops down beside me. Athena Whiteraven crosses her ankles to my right. Fiddle, Milgram and sixteen others all form a loose circle around a man who can only be the teacher.

"Hello," he says. He has a dreamy voice, like someone who has only half their mind on the task at hand, and but a few wisps of white hair. His skin is dark with roping tattoos. "I'm Tollin Cambridge."

Tollin Rhymes with Collin. He has a tattoo that says that across the back of his right hand, and the name Maria on the knuckles of his left. The rest of the tattoos are demon summoning diagrams. It's an old custom, tattoos instead of ink and paper, that's still used by indigenous tribes in the South East and South America, but westerners have dropped it. Mostly because you have to carve open your own flesh to make them work.

"Apparently he used to be an anthropologist," whispers Nat in a conspiratorial tone, "so he went to go see how an Indonesian tribe lived and picked up the idea there. The ink must have affected his brain because he's been a bit touched in the head since."

I nod, and Cambridge pushes his sleeves up a bit farther. I can count at least seven or eight diagrams have faded to scar tissue, signifying a terminated contract. Contracts, like the ones my Gram has, are based on a set of three conditions per party – three for the summoner, and three for the demon (Golden Triads, page 129, _The Theoretical Summoner_). It's beneficial for both human and monster and can only be aborted through mutual agreement, or through a process called Tearing. I saw a documentary on contracts with Gram once, and they interviewed people who'd had to tear away from a contracted demon. They described it as the most incredible pain, like all their nerve endings had been set on fire, like their heart was being torn out, the flesh rent from their bones.

It's no wonder he seems touched, then, if he's had to go through it eight times or more.

For people like me, who don't use their bodies as their Grims, the Tearing is just as painful, but there's no physical scarring. You can never summon the same demon again though, once a contract's been torn. It's a tricky business. Only the best make contracts. Gram has about a dozen.

"Now," says Cambridge. "Since it's the first day, let's all go around and introduce ourselves…"

You're kidding me, I think. Because that's shit. Nice to meet you games are for kids. This is shit. I want to go home. I hate it here.

Shit.

xxx

At Bonnie's, there are stupid things like group discussion, and there are things like Summoning 101, but in the end it's still a school, sanctioned by the government with an ISC approval plaque in the office. So I skip English and chemistry to write some letters – one to Gram, and one to Étienne.

I saw him once over the summer, Étienne, and he taught me how to horseback ride. Animals like him better than me, but I don't mind. It's one of my favourite things about him. He always says that they'd love me, too, if I gave them the chance, but I find horses unsettling. They're very big and I was always afraid that I'd fall off.

I write a very normal letter. Everyone else uses e-mail nowadays, but there's no internet at Bonnie's, so I have to do it old school. I ask him how he's enjoying university and whether he's learned anything interesting yet. He and his roommate recently acquired a cat called The Great Catsby, so I ask about it. I ask him to send me photos of the campus and his new apartment. I tell him that I don't like it at Bonnie's and that I miss and love him. I don't tell him why I don't like it, though, because I don't know how to put the sort of slimy feeling I've got into words without sounding stupid.

I draw a caricature of Headmistress Evelyn and label it, so that he doesn't worry that I actually hate it and will commit suicide, which is something that I worry about.

My second letter is addressed to Gram. I decide to send it to our London address, because that's where she spends most of her time now, though I write a note on the back of the envelope to our housekeeper to forward it to the Paris address if Gram's not in. I include all the usual pleasantries and I ask her about Mackenzie Evelyn. Then I ask her to please get me out of here and I threaten to starve myself to death, though I know she probably won't buy it.

There's a bowl of stamps in the kitchen at the dorm and I stick two on each letter. Instead of going to lunch with everyone else I drop them off at the office where a smiley, rosy-cheeked receptionists promises she'll drop them in the mailbox. I almost snatch them back from her, filled with the sudden impression that she's not going to put them in the mailbox at all. We're allowed to go into to town the last Saturday of every month. I could mail them then. I chew my lip for a moment, then thank her and leave.

I'm not hungry so I spend lunch hunting through the shrubbery for something. I don't know what, but something, anything, that might make me hate Bonnie's a little less. There's the pumpkin patch all tangled up with vines, monkshood grows by the chapel, the willow trees that shade the dorms and bits of barren soil with little signs that say things like 'carrots,' 'sweet potatoes' and 'peas.'

In the farthest corner, where the stone walls that encompass the grounds are very old and crumbly, there is a chicken coop with no chickens in it. More monkshood grows here and blackbirds like the one that blew up peck at the ground. They don't pay me any mind when I crouch to peer in through the coop's little door. My chest feels tight, like when you've just finished watching a scary film and you're afraid that if you turn on the lights or open a door you'll see something horrible. The shadows are deep and I can't see well.

But before I can move closer, the chapel bell rings, which means that class will start in ten minutes.

I decide that I'm not curious enough to look into what is clearly an empty chicken coop, especially an empty chicken coop that makes me want to throw up it gives me such a bad feeling.

On my way back to the main building, I run into Milgram March. He walks with a very straight back and his eyes are slanted and blue. He stops when he sees me, so I stop too.

"They called your name in chemistry," he says stiffly. "Your name was on roll, but you weren't there."

"I wasn't feeling well," I say. Not a lie, not really. Milgram squints at me. He has a fine face, but I think he'd look better if his hair weren't so short. I don't like the way he looks at me, like he's got x-ray eyes and he's seeing my bones, where they carved out the extra rib. The place where broke my collar bone when I was twelve. "Did you know that there's a chicken coop back there?"

"Yes," he replies. He talks strangely, not like someone who knows they're smart, but like someone who just knows. Grampy used to talk like that – completely unpretentious, decisive. Gram used to say people like Grampy had justice in them. I have no idea what that means, but Milgram March gives me that impression. "There were nineteen chickens up until the May of this year. I can tell you what kinds they were, if you like. I have it written down."

"That's okay," I tell him. "Where'd they go? Did they get eaten?"

"They were not eaten by students or staff," he says, as though this annoys him. "I don't know what happened to them. Nineteen chickens do not just disappear."

"Were they stolen?"

He looks at me like I'm stupid. "No. Nothing can be stolen at Bonnie's."

"Oh."

"Besides, why would anyone steal nineteen chickens?"

"I don't know. I hadn't thought of that."

He nods understandingly. "It's a mystery." He glances skyward, looking for something that I cannot fathom. "I hate mysteries. I hate suspense. You seem like the sort of person who understands what I'm talking about."

He's right, but I don't say so. "Where were you going?"

"I misplaced my pencil. I need a new one before class. A mechanical one, with 0.5mm lead."

"I have a pen. Do you want it?"

"You need it for class."

"I'm not going to class."

"You have to go to class. I don't want your pen. I don't accept writing utensils from slackers."

I find this strangely insulting. I've known Milgram March for about three hours, and he's already managed to offend me. Accept the pen, I want to say, accept my stupid pen! But he just gives me a disproving once-over, shakes his head and stalks off to the boys' dorm. I make a face at his back but he either doesn't notice or he doesn't care and just keeps walking with his straight back and stiff, military gait.

This afternoon there is mathematics, physics and summoning theory. I've always been good at maths, so I'll just go to my last class and call it a day. Even going to just that will surely exhaust me.

I feel dumb just standing around doing nothing, but I won't go to learn because I've already told Milgram I wouldn't. I don't want to be in the dorm, either, with its okay floors and blank walls. At home, at the flat where Gram and Grampy and I lived together, my room is all white, but it's not blank. Blank and white are different. Gram taught me that. Just because something is only one thing, doesn't mean it's boring. Even an idiot like me can understand that.

I decide to go back to the chicken coop. At least Milgram gave me more things to think about. It's like a riddle. Bonnie's has nineteen chickens. One day, all the chickens go missing. Nothing can be stolen from Bonnie's and they were not eaten. What happened?

I don't know, but I'd like to. It'll keep me busy, working this through. If my brain is working, then it doesn't have as much time to be depressed. They say that when genii are left too long without intellectual stimuli, their brains rot and they become depressed. I'm not a genius, but I do get despondent if I'm left alone too long. That's why I like math. It's a sensible subject that requires thinking, but in the end always comes down to a definitive answer.

The coop still makes my skin crawl, but this time I go right up to it and look inside. It smells stale. There are three tiers with little piles of straw where the chickens nested, but there are no chickens. For some reason, I'm very relieved. I don't know what I'd expected, but this what I wanted to see. Nothing. I laugh, but it doesn't sound like me. It's like listening to a recording and it's horrible, nervous.

I back away from the coop, not wanting to turn my back to it. I have that tight feeling in my chest again, like my ribcage has shrunk, or maybe like my heart has grown, taking up more space than any heart has a right to. It's almost painful. And, in the same way that Gram has always known and been able to sense monsters, that otherworldliness, I have a perfect grasp of the fact that something terrible has happened here.

I run.

xxx

I lock myself in my bedroom for the rest of the day. I haven't showered for more than forty-eight hours, and I'm hungry, but I pretend to be ill when Nat knocks at my door. I huddle under the covers. Even Humble Dorm Head Lauren comes to see if I'm alive. I make some retching noises so that she won't come inside and I tell her that I haven't died yet before fake vomiting a bit more.

I want to talk to someone. Maybe Nat, because she's been kind to me, or even Milgram, because I think he and I are a bit alike and he seemed interested in the chickens, too. But what would I say? It sounds stupid, even in my head.

I think you should know that the chicken coop on the grounds gives me the heebie-jeebies. Like that? They'd think I'm crazy – just as crazy as they all are. But I'm not. I'm normal, sane, probably the only normal and sane person here. I hate this place. If all the teachers are like Tollin Cambridge, all torn up, wrecked from how many times it's happened to them, then I don't think I can survive here.

I'll really kill myself at this rate: chickens coop with no chickens and professors all ruined from the inside out, no escape.

It takes a very long time before I am able to sleep, but when I do, I have nightmares. I see blackbirds, hundreds of them, all the blackbirds of the world I think, and they all take off at once. They paint the sky oily black, and then red when they hit the wards. I take shelter in the chicken coop, but Mackenzie Evelyn is already there, ripping the feathers off all the chickens and swallowing them whole. And every time she eats a chicken she gets fatter and fatter and she crushes me against the wall of the chicken coop.

"Stop eating!" I tell her. "You'll break the coop! You'll kill me!"

But she doesn't listen and she keeps eating and eating until all of the chickens are gone but she's still hungry. That's when she properly notices me and she opens her mouth real wide. Wide enough to fit one hundred chickens at once. She grabs me and laughs, and her laugh sounds like the worst thing in the world, in the universe. It's only when I can see the feathers caught in her teeth and smell her foul, bloody breath that I wake up.

But I still hear her laughter, and it fills the spaces of my brain and the memory of her horrible mouth makes me vomit for real.

Ha.

Ha.

* * *

><p><strong>3.<strong> 'Lo, lovelies. I hope you've all been well. I've been slow with writing, but I never forgot you guys! I don't have too much to say, to be honest. I actually am pretty okay with this chapter? I have but one request, and that is for you guys to keep this installment in the back of your mind as me progress through the story.

In any case, big thanks and lots of love to all of my reviewers! I am always very happy to hear your opinions. Furthermore, for any new readers, I am still accepting some characters. Please refer to the Ch1AN. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, via PM here or my tumblr.

Have a wonderful, wonderful day! xoxo


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